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Subject: Re: Chessmaster without sound (cont.)

Author: John Merlino

Date: 10:24:52 04/07/01

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On April 07, 2001 at 11:27:38, Jim Wang wrote:

>Chess is a game during which one needs to concentrate.
>Distracting sounds and noise can only bother the serious chess player.
>I don't mean to say anything about the Chessmaster team, they really do their
>best, but it's just ridiculous that such a fine program won't work without a
>sound card.
>Let's hope the next version will be able to run without a sound card.
>Many people with a hearing disability play chess.
>Sound cards are completely useless to them.
>
>Jim

Are you aware of the "NoAudio" INI setting? If not, then I quote from the
Chessmaster FAQ (which you can view by going to
www.chessmaster.com/faqs8000.html):

------------------
Q: Chessmaster hangs upon startup and all I get is a little message box that
mentions sound (or has no text in it at all). What's causing this?
A: The most likely explanation is that this is a sound card issue. Some users
have had this problem fixed by updating the drivers for their sound card. Other
users have reported that they, in fact, had no sound card at all! Chessmaster
8000 requires some sort of sound-playing device (either a separate sound card or
an embedded card on your computer's motherboard). Other users have experienced
this problem because they were running a program that "took control" of their
sound card, such as WinAmp, Windows Media Player, another game, or some software
that came with their sound card. In almost all cases, closing down these kinds
of programs before attempting to run Chessmaster removed the problem. Still
other users had a voice modem that was set up in such a way as to prevent
Chessmaster from initializing. Since each voice modem is different, no generic
instructions can apply on how to solve this problem. If you have a voice modem
and are experiencing this problem, you should look at your modem's properties
and documentation for any settings that might be affecting Chessmaster's sound
initialization. To help determine if there is a problem with your sound card's
settings, the v1.0.1 patch for Chessmaster 8000 adds support for a special
CM.INI debugging setting. If you want to test whether or not your sound card's
settings are preventing Chessmaster from initializing, add the following to your
CM.INI file (found in the folder where you installed Chessmaster 8000):

[debug]
NoAudio=1

If Chessmaster starts up properly with this setting enabled, then there is a
problem with your sound card. Be sure to disable this setting (either by
changing it to "NoAudio=0" or by deleting the entry altogether) once you are
done testing, because it is intended strictly for debugging purposes only.
------------------

So, this allows you to run Chessmaster without a sound card, although this is
TOTALLY unsupported. But, of course, you will lose the ability to use many
features.

jm



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